We,
the Korean National Assembly members’ Caucus Against the Korea-US FTA
and the Korean Alliance Against the Korea-US FTA, a coalition of over
300 labor unions and civil society groups, have organized a delegation
to Washington, D.C. this week, January 24-28, 2011. We have come here to
tell American policymakers and civil society that many Korean people
oppose the proposed Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (KorUS FTA). During
our visit, we were shocked to hear that many U.S. politicians believe
that the KorUS FTA is a gift to the Korean people and will be beneficial
to the relationship between both countries. In reality, many Korean
people consider that the KorUS FTA will be detrimental to the lives of
the Korean people, is biased in favor of the narrow interests of
multinational corporations and contains numerous damaging provisions
that would destroy our jobs in both countries and undermine our rights
as citizens, the environment and health, and the practice and principles
of democratic governance.We
came to Washington to share our strong view that the proposed KorUS FTA
should not enter into force for the following reasons:First,
the proposed KorUS FTA shrinks the policy space available to our
governments to promote the public interest and endangers our
governments’ ability to protect public services and advance public
health, food safety, workers’ and small farmers’ rights, and
environmental preservation. Numerous provisions contained in the
KorUS FTA conflict with the public interest policies upon which the
general public relies while providing new rights and powers to a narrow
class of large multinational corporations in each of our countries.
While there could be a good agreement between our countries, this
agreement undermines the broad interests of the people of the U.S. and
the people of Korea in favor of promoting the interests of a narrow band
of big corporations. In particular, the investor-state dispute
procedure allows private corporations, even third-party corporations
doing business either in Korea or the U.S., to bring our government to
the foreign arbitration tribunals to demand compensation over public
policy standards, even those that apply to domestic and foreign
corporations alike. We do not understand why such a provision would be
included in the KorUS FTA, given both countries have well-established
rules of law and well functioning courts. Such provisions were not
included in the U.S.-Australia FTA.Second, we do not support a deal that only encourages growth-without-employment in both countries.
The proposed deal pursues the North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA)-plus model. Yet, the U.S.’s experience with NAFTA is instructive
and should not be repeated. Since NAFTA went into effect, the U.S. has
experienced massive job loss in the manufacturing sector and numerous
laws were challenged before foreign tribunals. Provisions of the
proposed FTA will weaken the social safety net in both countries and
strip crucial safeguards in a time of global economic instability and high unemployment. In addition, the proposed KorUS FTA, with its low Rules-of-Origin standards, incentivizes the off-shoring of manufacturing—and jobs.
Up to 65% of products can be produced in foreign countries and exported
as U.S. or Korean products, killing jobs and destabilizing the labor
market in both countries.

Third, the proposed agreement promotes reckless deregulation.
This agreement was negotiated prior to the financial crisis that hit
the world several years ago. It promotes the very practices of financial
deregulation that have so damaged the U.S. and Korean economy. The
agreement conflicts with regulations that our two governments have put
in place to stabilize their financial markets, posing a threat to our
countries, our economic partners, and eventually to the global economy.
In the aftermath of the global economic crisis, certainly we must ensure
that all policies, including our “trade” agreements must preserve our
governments’ authority to control and regulate investment and financial
markets. However, both governments simply ignored the lessons we learnt a
few years ago even when they re-negotiated the deal last year and did
not alter these provisions to reflect the post-crisis lessons.

Finally,
the proposed agreement has the potential to bring about an unintended
harmful effect on the relationship between the U.S. and Korea.
While proponents claim that the proposed agreement will strengthen our
countries’ relationship, it carries the potential to have the opposite
effect. Many in Korea view the agreement as having been pushed not only
for economic relations. Geopolitics played a great role. The
supplemental deal of the last year was struck when the military tension
between the South and North Koreas was at its highest since the 1950s’
Korean War. The vast majority of Korean people believe that the outcome
of the supplemental deal is an unacceptable humiliation and an overly
high price to pay for the Americans’ role in providing national defense.
Furthermore, if the KorUS FTA results in restricted to access to public
service, job loss, deterioration of quality of life and intensified
social polarization as we have seen the detrimental effect of the NAFTA
model in operation in North America, the anger over the damage will be
directed at the other country. When this happens, the KorUS FTA would
bring conflict rather than strengthening the sense of friendship towards
the other country among the ordinary people of both countries.We
appreciate the time and effort the citizens of both countries are
giving to make this visit successful in preventing the negative
consequences that the Korea-US FTA will have on both of our countries.